<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Customers without telephones aren&apos;t wanted, despite having good money',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/09/07.jpg" alt="The street outside the credit union" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="health">
	<h2>Health</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;m back to measuring in at 126 centimetres in circumference.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion posts for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Installing on Linux is even easier than installing on Windows - but only if you have the package name.
			Which I would have had if I&apos;d read the provided instructions.
			I didn&apos;t notice their availability until the install was complete though.
			Normally, it&apos;s easy to look up a program&apos;s package name, but not so much when the program&apos;s name consists of a single letter.
			I mean, what do you even search for?
			Single letters don&apos;t often return great search results.
			It&apos;s a matter of poor name choice on the part of the R developers.
			I mean, I get that they were imitating the name of what R is meant to replace, S, but S is a pretty terrible name as well.
		</p>
		<p>
			If you&apos;ve got the package name, you simply tell the package manager to install it for you.
			The package manager knows where the program is to download it, so you don&apos;t have to find that.
			It knows what version to get too, so you don&apos;t have to worry about accidentally getting the version that doesn&apos;t work with you computer (for example, 32- versus 64-bit) and all updates are handled without needing to manually download an update from each website you&apos;ve gotten software from.
			Best of all, when a program needs other programs to run, the package manager installs those other programs for you.
			On Windows, you have to track down all those programs yourself.
			I get that many people prefer Windows for various reasons, but comparatively easy installation is definitely not one of the benefits Windows provides.
		</p>
		<p>
			Anyway, I don&apos;t really have any tips for using R, as I&apos;m completely unfamiliar with it.
			I&apos;ll be learning to use it for the first time this term.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Installation is only hard if you don&apos;t know the package name.
			Once you have the package name, both installation and updates are easier than on more popular systems such as Windows and OS X.
			Normally getting a package name is no big deal, it&apos;s just made a bit more difficult when the name of the software you&apos;re looking for consists of only a single letter.
			It&apos;s an issue of poor naming choice.
			What do your potential users type into a search engine to find your program?
		</p>
		<p>
			These days, I use Debian because I&apos;ve become an idealist, but I actually switched to Linux originally for a combination of legal reasons and ease.
			Linux has been by far the easiest system I&apos;ve had the pleasure of working with.
			I started out thinking that only Windows and OS X were options.
			I used OS X because Windows would always fight against me in whatever I tried to do and frequently crashed or froze on me.
			My computer broke though, and my uncle gave me a new (new to me, but a used machine) laptop.
			It ran Windows though, and I knew I didn&apos;t have the level of skill required to pull off using a Windows machine without problems.
			So I tried to look up instructions for installing OS X on non-Apple hardware.
			I found that instructions exist, but that actually performing such an installation is illegal, due to language in their software licensing terms.
			I didn&apos;t thing they&apos;d ever catch me at it, but figured if they didn&apos;t want me as a user just because of what hardware I had, I wouldn&apos;t buy a copy of their $a[OS].
			I&apos;d find some other non-Windows $a[OS] by developers that didn&apos;t care what I installed it on.
			And such a system I did find.
			While I was only looking for a system that was easier to work with than Windows, I ended up finding one easier to work with than OS X in many ways too.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Yeah, installing on the three different systems is a different experience, as in, consequently, uninstalation.
			Having used all three in the past, it&apos;s clear each system has its own patterns.
			On Windows, you usually have to find the right website, then download and run an installer.
			Removing the software usually involves locating the uninstall program, which is usually installed with the software.
			OS X uses installers rarely, but usually instead involves downloading either the application itself or a disk image containing the application, then dragging and dropping the application into the applications directory.
			No actual installation is even needed, and removing the application is as easy as just deleting it like any other file.
			OS X actually is just hiding some of the details from you though.
			Each &quot;application file&quot; is actually a whole directory of executables and resources (such as program icons), so it&apos;s basically a run-in-place application such as is sometimes also found on Windows or Linux.
			On Linux, you usually locate the application in the system&apos;s repository and tell the package manage to install it for you.
			Likewise, you can tell the package manager to uninstall the application for you later.
		</p>
		<p>
			It looks like what R is doing is accepting string input.
			In computer science, a string is just a bit of text, and the common convention is to delimit them with single or double quotes.
			Using your example, it lets the computer tell the difference between <code>c(&apos;cat&apos;, &apos;cat&apos;, &apos;dog&apos;, &apos;bird&apos;, &apos;fish&apos;, &apos;fish&apos;)</code> and <code>c(&apos;cat, cat&apos;, &apos;dog, bird&apos;, &apos;fish, fish&apos;)</code>.
			There&apos;s a chance you might want comas or spaces in your input, after all.
			You can usually put a backslash before your quote if you want it to be a part of the input (such as <code>c(&apos;cat\&apos;s whisker&apos;, &apos;cat\&apos;s whisker&apos;, &apos;dog\&apos;s ear&apos;, &apos;bird\&apos;s feather&apos;, &apos;fish\&apos;s scale&apos;, &apos;fish\&apos;s scale&apos;)</code>), though I haven&apos;t tried that with R just yet.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="errand">
	<h2>Errand</h2>
	<p>
		A while back, I mentioned that I&apos;d have an errand on the seventh in which I&apos;d go deal with a company that demands its customers have telephone service.
		The representative told me they had an upcoming meeting and they&apos;d bring up the issue then.
		If I came by on or after the seventh, they&apos;d let me know how that went.
		Well, it seems the company would rather refuse me service than allow customers without telephones to do business with them.
		Oh, well.
		Their loss.
		I did my part by bringing the issue up with the representative in hopes that they&apos;d talk with the higher ups, which they did.
		And I showed continued interest by following up with them today.
		They said they&apos;d continue pushing, but the company claimed it would cost them thousands of dollars to implement a customer $a[ID] system that isn&apos;t telephone specific.
		That sounds like a complete lie, and the company is likely just making up excuses because they want telephone numbers for telemarketing purposes.
		They probably made up that expense to shoot down the idea of decoupling the $a[ID]s from the telephone&apos;s identifiers; they&apos;re probably pretty adamant.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
